MetroLyrics Becomes First Lyrics Site to 'Go Legit'

[Jitway]

When faced with a burning desire to decipher the lyrics to a song, most of us typically turn to Google for a mishmash of ad-infested sites with inaccurate lyrics. Despite the preponderance of ads on these sites, no royalties are paid to songwriters or publishers.

 

MetyroLyrics, which bills itself as the most highly trafficked lyrics site on the web (and one of the 500 fastest-growing websites in general), became the first dedicated lyrics site to "go legit" Thursday, thanks to a partnership with Gracenote that cuts music publishers in on advertising revenue.

 

Alan Juristovski, CEO of MetroLyrics, said he has wanted to pay licensing fees for the song lyrics on the site for the past three years, but "never approached publishers directly, because [he] felt it would take much longer than if [they went] with somebody who already had a deal in place."

 

Juristovski added that previous solutions were unacceptable because MetroLyrics' business model is different from that of Yahoo, MTV, AOL or Disney, which have included lyrics as a side feature for a while now. Gracenote apparently relayed its partner's concerns as a standalone lyrics site to the hundreds of publishers with which it has agreements, and all parties have agreed to share advertising revenue generated by the site.

 

Songwriters and publishers will be compensated relative to the amount of traffic their songs receive on MetroLyrics or can request that their lyrics not be posted. (Of course, even novice Googlers can easily find those lyrics on sites that pay no royalties.)

 

MetroLyrics' submission engine will funnel lyrics submitted by its users to a Gracenote database where they can be cleared by publishers and cleaned up by Gracenote's staff of lyrics scribes. According to Jim Hollingsworth, SVP of sales and marketing at Gracenote, the company has at times had nearly 100 people working on its lyrics and began transcribing about four years ago.

 

The process has cost millions of dollars, but this landmark announcement reinforces the notion that lyrics could become a legitimate business proposition. To make things easier, some publishers have begun submitting lyrics to Gracenote before the songs are even released.

 

"By working with the publishers and understanding the realities of the marketplace, what's going to be acceptable to the user experience, what's going to be required from a technology standpoint and what's going to be acceptable as a business model, we've taken one of the biggest lyrics sites in the world and brought them into an authorized service," said Hollingsworth. "That is a win-win. [MetroLyrics] like it because it's a better-quality service and a lot of their back-end costs go away. The content community loves it because it's authorized and licensed, and dollars are flowing to the right people at the right times." He said Gracenote even tracks how much back-up singers are owed.

 

When we asked Juristovski what it felt like to be the first site to go legit, he laughed and said, "It's a good question, it's the million-dollar question. Actually, [i feel] very good, and a little nervous as well." The reason for his nerves is clear to anyone who followed Gracenote's acquisition of the CDDB database: People don't like to feel that their work is being hijacked and sold back to them, or that the lyrics they dutifully submitted were deleted.

 

MetroLyrics has in fact lost some lyrics during the conversion to Gracenote's system. But overall, the Gracenote partnership will increase the number of lyrics on MetroLyrics from 400,000 or so to about double that. Besides, as both Juristovski and Hollingsworth pointed out, Gracenote's lyrics will likely be more accurate than those submitted by users. The only real downside, according to Juristovski, would occur if MetroLyrics remains the only lyrics site that pays publishers. Now that Gracenote offers a way for pure lyrics sites to license songs in return for a revenue share, he says, there's no excuse for unlicensed lyrics sites to continue operation.

 

 

 

This is great news for all who are looking for lyrics to your favorite tunes. I use this site and gracenote all the time. Great software and site for lyrics.

 

 

MetroLyrics

 

Source HERE

[Lucandrake]

Nice, guess I'll stop using google, sometimes I go through 4 sites before I find one that has the majority of words correct...